Hurts Like Heaven
by CafeAime
Summary: Katniss uses her heart as a weapon, and it hurts like heaven. Katniss-Peeta oneshots.
1. The Boy on Fire

"I want to request individual training."

This short, stumbling burst of speech tumbles out so fast it can only have been rehearsed. It startles me: until now, I'd been sure I was the only one in the dining room, pouring over tribute profiles that I'd hastily constructed the day before from what little information I'd managed to glean from gossip, observation and good old fashioned eavesdropping. Intent on my pencil scribbles, I must not have heard Peeta enter the room. This troubles me. I'm not one for letting down my guard. I let this information occupy the front of my mind before I realise what Peeta has said. I frown. "What?"

"I want to request individual training." Again, something about this seems forced, rehearsed. Peeta's face gives little away but his eyes, a little too steely and – is that moisture welling up in the corner? I narrow my eyes, scrutinising him. A few hours ago he'd been more than happy to play the sick little happy families game we'd constructed. He shifts under my gaze uncomfortably. I don't let up.

"Why?"

Peeta takes a deep breath. He manages to turn it into a bored sigh but something about the way it shudders is reminiscent of someone trying to steady himself. This self-betrayal is not like Peeta, the king of body language deceit – you'd never know from watching he and Katniss together that they weren't the best of friends. It's almost too convincing, sometimes, and I have to remind myself that my two little tributes have never been friends. It's easier that way, I suppose, to accept that at least one of them could die at the other's hands.

"I don't want to train with Katniss any more. I'll just end up hesitating to kill her in the arena because I feel guilty."

Peeta's response, although reasonable, smacks of rehearsal once again. It's not like him, this cold, brutal language – it's almost as if he's trying to convince me. And talk of his killing Katniss doesn't feel… right.

It's almost too convincing, the way he acts around her.

My eyes widen as I realise really why Peeta Mellark had found it so easy to adopt his fellow tribute as his new best friend and training partner. The mixture of emotions that this prompts disgusts me: a pang of pity for this poor, innocent boy, and hope – because maybe, just maybe, we can use this to our advantage.

"Sit down, son."

Peeta frowns slightly at the unfamiliar term of endearment but sits opposite me at the dining table, the resigned look on his face telling me he knows I've figured him out. He's watching me cautiously. Is he waiting for me to shout, I wonder? I open my mouth uncertainly and my eyes involuntarily flicker to the decanter of wine on the board behind him. He follows my gaze and half smiles – he reaches for it but I put up a hand to stop him. Not now. "Peeta, I know how you must be feeling, but - "

"No, you don't." The words shoot out of his mouth as though he is no longer in control of them – a thousand miles away from the well rehearsed, repeated phrase that tumbled from him just minutes ago. " You have no idea. Think you know what it's like to wonder if you're going to end up watching her die? The girl - " he gulps and the speech ends as suddenly as it began. I finish it for him.

"The girl you love." I say gently. He swallows again, nods. All the fire is gone from him and he slumps onto the table, his head in his hands. I'd had my suspicions before, but now it seems all too clear. His eagerness to accept my plan that they keep as close as possible. His efforts to promote her abilities at dinner the day before.

The way he looks at her, sometimes, when he thinks nobody is looking.

Katniss might be the girl on fire, but it is clear from those looks that Peeta is the one with fire burning inside of him.

I take a deep breath and immediately regret not taking the wine that Peeta had offered to pour. I push this thought from my head. He's not looking at me. His face is still buried in his hands. Is this out of shame, or simply a gesture of despair? When he raises his head, though, I see exactly why: tears are streaming down his face. I admire him for this. The strength to cry, the strength to admit it, the strength to love even though he knows he can never have her.

Maysilee Donner's face flashes before my eyes.

"Are you alright, Haymitch?"

Peeta's looking at me in concern. Again, a pang of admiration hits me for this remarkable boy who has the strength to care, even now. I half smile and ignore the question, getting up to pour the glass of wine that I'd almost managed to resist.

"First of all, between you and me, you could do a lot better," I say, recalling Katniss's scowls, threats and the knife she'd stuck between my fingers. I sigh and shake my head. "Secondly, what do you want to do about this?"

Peeta closes his eye. Another tear seeps between his eyelids. "I don't know." Then, in a whisper, "I can't kill her, Haymitch. And it would kill me to see her die."

I sigh. A plan, already half formed, swims to the front of my mind, dances tantalisingly in front of me so tangible I can almost see it. A way, as I'd imagined before, to take advantage of this. "I have a plan, but you're not going to like it."


	2. Hurts Like Heaven

I barely register the movement of the train as it starts up again, refuelled, until I remember with a pang where it is taking us. Barely notice that my nails are digging into the palms of my hands until a drop of blood runs down my wrist. I unclench my hands and half-heartedly try to rub the crimson stains away. No good: they simply spread, forking out across my palms, running from the crescent-shaped marks into the creases to form rivers of blood. Something about the pattern this creates reminds me of fire. Of the girl who was on fire.

I clench my hands tight shut.

Clench my eyes shut, too, but this does nothing to prevent the shock of images that come to the front of my mind almost instantly. Katniss, looking so pleased to see me on the riverbank. Katniss, kissing me – the real me, not the dazed, fever-high me – for the first time in the arena. Katniss, looking so stunningly beautiful in her deadly, burning cape of crimson, gold and blue.

The girl who was on fire. Well, she certainly burned me.

One of the Capitol attendants interrupts my reverie, asking with her eyes rather than her useless tongue if I need anything. I hide my hands behind my back and smile, no, thank you, I'm fine. Her eyes flicker to the blood stains on the windowsill that I'd been gripping so tightly when she entered. She leaves, re-enters and expressionlessly passes me a bandage and an antiseptic wipe. I take it and she is gone before I can utter another word. I don't realise until she's gone how completely alone I am, now. It takes me a moment to realise why this sensation suddenly feels so alien: Katniss. After she found me in the cave, there hasn't been a second where I've been willingly separated from her. I regard my hands, the blood staunched now by the bandage, and realise that the reason they feel so empty is because Katniss isn't holding them. I drop them instantly.

In a way, I suppose, I'd known it couldn't last. Once we got home, after all, there'd be nothing to keep us together any more: perhaps a mutual need for comfort from the nightmares, but nothing more. Perhaps not even that – Katniss has other people to hold and relax her at night. I find myself, once again, considering the role that Gale plays in the life of the girl I love. My throat tightens and I sigh, pressing my forehead against the hard, cool surface of the window. Gale. I wonder what I'll do, when I see him for the first time? The answer springs to mind before I even have time to consider: nothing. I'm not like Katniss, who puts her life on the line to save the things she cares about. The easy answer to that is that the things that Katniss cares about usually care about her, too: a harder, more realistic response to consider is that I just don't have the courage.

I could've dealt with it, maybe, if she hadn't made it quite so realistic. If she hadn't torturously convinced me, with her kisses and caresses, that it was all true. That she loved me.

In the end, as my mother had always known she would, Katniss took me down. And it turns out she didn't need a bow, or a sword, or even just the scarred hands that stroked my hair until I fell asleep every night. No.

Katniss uses her heart as a weapon, and it hurts like heaven.

**AN: A big thanks to all those who read the last chapter, and an even bigger one to Mrs. K. Mellark (awesome name, by the way) for being the first and only person to review. This chapter is based on a song called "Hurts Like Heaven" by Coldplay. If you haven't heard it, go listen to it now – I heard it the first time after having read the first book and everything about it screams Katniss and Peeta. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to cry in a hole because there aren't any more books. Please review, and I'll be sure to post another chapter within a couple of days. **

**PS. Desperately seeking beta!**


	3. Smile

"Smile."

Gale's head snaps up to stare at me. His eyes are wide in surprise and his hands go straight to the dagger Katniss has told me is tucked beneath his waistband. When he sees it's me, though, his eyes narrow and he drops his hands pointedly. It's as if he wants to show he doesn't consider me a threat. "What do you want, Peeta?" His voice is resigned, the kind you'd use with a young, pestering child. I try not to let that sting me. I watch his eyes flicker to the instrument in my hands, and he frowns. "Why do you have a camera?"

I let my lips form a bitter smile. "I'd been hoping you'd ask that. I need something from you."

"Forget it." He begins to trudge on, making no effort to conceal his animosity towards me as he glances sidewards at me when he passes me. That's it? That's all I get? For a moment I am confused – what have I done to him? But of course: Katniss. If it is hard for me to approach the boy who poses as her cousin, knowing now what has transpired between them, what he feels for her, then how difficult must it be for him to even acknowledge me? I sigh. I had anticipated this being easier. I sprint to catch up with him – he has spared no energy in putting a considerable distance between us – and grab his shoulder.

"Wait."

In an instant, I am pressed against the wall of the alley in which we stand and his knife is at my throat. I blink in surprise. His face is almost touching mine and in my nervousness I find this funny: if anyone were to see us here, from a distance, they'd imagine we were kissing. He sees the nervous smile flit across my face and scowls. The knife digs into my neck a little more. "What?" he hisses. "What do you want? Make it quick." I don't doubt the threat in his voice.

"I need something." Before he can dismiss me, I cut him off. "I need something for Katniss." His grip on the dagger weakens momentarily in his surprise – he wasn't expecting that – and I take advantage of this to push him away from me. He doesn't resist.

"What? If Katniss needs something from me, she only has to ask. She knows that."

"I know, but – she doesn't know she needs this." I watch his eyebrow raise and know my enigmatic response has done me no favours. Before he can move away, I take a step forward and explain. About the Quarter Quell and what it means – that one of us will die. About my deal with Haymitch. About my plans to save her, if I can. During the course of my speech, he relaxes somewhat, putting the dagger away, moving to lean on the wall he'd just minutes ago had me pushed against. When I am finished we are silent. It is several more minutes before I can bring myself to speak. "Well?"

He glances at me, surprised, as if he had forgotten I was there. "Well…" he begins slowly. "It sounds like you've got this covered. What can you need from me?"

I'd hoped we'd be getting to this. I reach under my shirt and take out the locket I'd had made – the one the shape of Katniss's mockingjay. Unhooking the clasp on the back of my neck, I pass it to him. He takes it silently. Opens it. Sees the picture of Katniss' mother and sister already inside. He looks back up at me. "I don't understand."

"I want Katniss to come home, Gale," I say softly, and I suddenly realise that this is the first time I've called him by his name to his face. The same revelation is surely crossing his mind too because he refuses to meet my eyes. "I've been thinking about it and I know she's going to try and do the same thing for me."

Gale's gaze shoots up to mine and he glares at me. "I doubt it, _Lover Boy. _Not with Prim waiting at home for her."

I nod. In my urgency, I barely feel the pain of the sting. "My thoughts exactly."

The light of revelation brightens his eyes. He looks back to the locket, to the camera in my hands. A silent nod is all I need to know he's got it, and that this is my chance. I raise the camera and he shifts awkwardly, unsure of how to position himself. While he's figuring this out, I take a deep breath and address the unspoken wall between us. "It was never real, you know. None of it." _Not for her, _I want to add, but I restrain myself. Gale looks unconvinced but nods. He looks into the camera.

"Smile," I say weakly.

**AN: In case you can't remember, Peeta gives Katniss a locket with pictures of her mum, Prim and Gale inside when they're in the Arena for the second time and Katniss is surprised to see Gale smiling. As you can see, I wondered about that, too. But no longer! Aha!**

**I've got about a dozen of these oneshots stored up, but at the moment I just don't feel like posting them because despite the amazing numbers of hits I've had, nobody seems to be responding. So please, for this poor, rambling fangirl, click review and save me from my terrible self-pity... sob... sob...**

**Seriously, though, if you review I will send you a little silver parachute full of love. And cookies. Everyone likes cookies.**


	4. Relief

"_I could just tell what Haymitch wanted me to do by what he sent, or didn't send."_

"_Well, I never had the opportunity. Because he never sent me anything until you showed up."_

My initial annoyance at this has long since died down and I am aware of myself enough to register relief. Relief… and shame. The look on Katniss's face when I lost it – lost _myself _– in a haze of red that I'd interpreted as anger. Anger at what? Anger at Katniss? No, I've tried that – I can never manage to make myself angry with Katniss, even when she had the disgusting decency to save my life by breaking my heart. Anger at Haymitch, then. But no – looking back now, objectively, at the scene in the room where nobody goes, even then I'd known that he was right. That I would have done the same thing in his position.

The haze of red, I realise now, was directed at myself.

Because I didn't realise.

Because I let Katniss suffer through this alone.

Because I was pigheaded enough to act angry when all I wanted was to take that beautiful, considerate girl into my arms and thank her for caring just enough not to burden me with this.

The only thing I feel for Haymitch is a fresh wave of relief, now, because it turns out that he was thinking what I was thinking all along: when the time comes, if you have to make a choice, choose Katniss.

I'm relieved too because when I kissed Katniss in the arena sometimes I could half see, half feel her turn her body minutely to glance into a nearby camera. I'm relieved because I know, now, that she was looking for Haymitch. Asking his approval.

It still hurts, but it hurts less than it did when I could have sworn she was looking for Gale.

_Gale. _I recall, now, that at least a portion of my anger is down to him.

"_Snow knows he's not really my cousin now." Katniss's voice is almost a whisper now, and I only have to wonder why she is avoiding my eyes for a moment because then she speaks again: "someone saw him kiss me by the fence in the meadow."_

The red haze begins to settle over my vision again before I can shake it away. I do, though, because I know that really, I have no claim over Katniss. Snow may have forced us together but Gale has the right to tear us apart. Because although I might convince myself otherwise, she never really wanted me. She just wanted to come home. And, if she could, she wanted to take me home, too.

I know I should be thinking about what Katniss said, about Snow's not so subtle threats, but I can't do it. I know I should be angry but I just can't force it.

I just keep picturing him, kissing her by the fence in the meadow that separates the part of her life that has always been his from the side that I had thought might one day become mine.


	5. Walk

**Stimulus: **My drabble "Smile"

**POV: **Katniss

**Dedication: **To ., who was the beta for the last chapter. Thanks chook! And also to you, IF YOU REVIEW. Please, people. I'll cry. OH! And thank you to salanderjade for being my tenth reviewer!

**AN: **This one takes place pretty soon after "Smile", where Peeta tells Gale that Katniss is going to try to save him.

-x-

Peeta gives us one day off training. We don't ask why, but I know that it is a day for saying goodbye. So Haymitch tries to suck the last few vapours of white liquor from the bottles that Peeta drains, Peeta wanders into the town to spend some time in the bakery (where they have a "real" oven) and I sit and think how convenient it is that this day just so happens to be a Sunday.

I spend the first portion of the day with my family but by noon, when Gale comes to collect me, I am so on edge from the silence and the sadness that when Gale knocks on the door I am so relieved to escape the atmosphere of intense emotional repression that I practically run out to join him. Like my token, I spread my wings and fly from the house that could never be a home.

Gale and I walk silently together through the District, making a point of staying as close as we can to the fence. Beyond it lies the freedom that I realise, now, I had so long taken for granted. My home seems bleak and oppressive without the wind to ruffle my ebony feathers.

I panic for a moment when Gale reaches for my hand and I consider easing it away – what if someone sees? But then I remember that it no longer matters what anyone sees. Still, I keep an eye out for any signs of people who might be shocked by this development. Thread, maybe. Peeta, definitely.

"You know you can ask me anything, right?" The question is so unexpected that I have to think hard for a moment, unable to understand.

"Yes…" I say, frowning. I look sideways at him curiously but drop my gaze when I see that he has turned to face me. He stares at me with an intensity that is almost painful, as if he wishes to read my thoughts.

"So if you needed anything, anything at all," he persists, pulling me to a stop and reaching with his one free hand to gently tip my chin up so that I have no choice but to look him in the eye. His eyes burn with such intensity, such desperate passion, that I cannot look away. "You'd ask me, wouldn't you? I'd be the one you'd come to." I open my mouth to respond but can't, too confounded by the nonsensical nature of this conversation and the strange way he emphasised the word "me". "Like if you needed a reason to come home."

So that's it. The reason for his persistent questioning. I curse myself for not heading the conversation off in a completely different direction as soon as I had suspected that it might take this turn. One I am, apparently, completely unprepared for. "Gale, I…" My voice trails off, partly because I have nothing to say and partly because I have just realised something. How does he _know_? Gale might know me better than most but there's no way that he could have guessed that I would be willing to give up my life for Peeta. He has some kind of mind blindness where Peeta is concerned. So how did he know? "What's brought this on?" I ask in a cautiously emotionless voice. He smiles.

"You don't deny it. It's true then." He's refusing to meet my gaze, staring through the fence with such determination I think he might break a hole in it with sheer willpower and whisk me away. I don't understand – what's true? But when I voice my confusion, he only smiles sadly and shakes his head. "We should be getting back," is all he says.

As we turn back on ourselves and head back towards Victor's Village, I am left with a feeling of unease and, oddly, as though I have betrayed my best friend. This time I am the one who reaches for his hand out of sheer guilt, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead.


	6. Dandelion

**Stimulus: **Dandelion

**POV: **Katniss

**Dedication: **To salanderjade (yes, again) who leaves the loveliest reviews. :)

**AN: **Haven't written anything like this in a loooong time. It's set several years after Mockingjay. Hope you enjoy! Oh, and please check out "These Games We Play" by Katie Brown Eyes. Amazing stuff :)

-x-

We don't celebrate birthdays often in 12 – partly because putting a number to things reminds us of how few years we have, but partly because we never had the money or the time to spare. But when we return from the arena, something clicks. Something that tells us exactly how precious each year really is. So – privately – Peeta and I begin celebrating the day that kids in the Capitol and even some in 1 and 3 have always had the right to enjoy.

It's my birthday – my twenty first, I think, though I've long since stopped counting – when Peeta gives me the gift that takes my breath away. He has to say my name several times, concern seeping into his voice, before I hear him. "Do you like it?" he asks, and I know him well enough to hear that he's nervous beneath the jokey exterior. I turn to him and he frowns when he realises I am crying.

"It's beautiful," I say, and nothing can hide the honesty in my voice. He relaxes and his arms wind around my waist. We both turn to study the painting once more.

In the painting, Prim and I are in the school yard, holding hands. We are both radiant, Prim more so than I – I silently thank Peeta for this. In my hand is a tiny golden dandelion. The expression on my face speaks of silent joy.

"Did I get it right?" He's nervous again. "I spent days trying to get your face right. I could never be sure what was going on in your head, even then."

I recall the moment; it's the day after Peeta has thrown the bread to me in the rain. I had gone to school quietly hoping for a chance to thank him while another part of me is desperate to avoid such a scene. The moment when our eyes had met at the end of the day has become forever associated with the first dandelion of the year. With the salad I had made from it, combining it with Peeta's bread to make the meal that had saved my family. With survival. With… the light at the end of the storm. I tell Peeta this, and at the end of my explanation there are tears in his eyes.

"You're my dandelion," I whisper, and his tears spill over onto the hand that cups his face.


	7. Episode

**Stimulus: **Stairs

**POV: **Katniss

**Dedication:** Suzanne Collins, for providing the best troubled romance that fanfic-ers have had at their fingertips for a long time :)

**AN: **I really like this one. I hope you guys do too :) I've given up on hounding for reviews now, because it's enough to know that at least 130 people are reading each chapter. Thanks guuuuys :)

-x-

Peeta had always been the stable one. The one who could handle anything. After all, he was the one who recognised that half the battle of the Games is taking on the Capitol audiences and had done it magnificently. He _wasn't _the one who shot and arrow at the Gamemakers, or pushed his fellow tribute into an urn that broke their hands. Yes. If you ask anyone who knows us, they'll tell you Peeta is the stable one.

I don't know whether or not to be surprised when it becomes apparent that when it comes to _not _fighting any more, Peeta is… well.

Broken.

Sometimes, like me, he stays in bed and does not move. But while my periods of inactivity last in general only a day, Peeta can stay in bed for over a week at a time, not eating, not drinking, not getting up. I am scared to go to him the first few times for fear that this episode will trigger some sort of flashback at my return to his side. So I stay well away, sending Haymitch in three times a day with tea and food. But when I hear of the way that Peeta's ribs have begun to show, I vow that from now on, taking care of him will be my duty. My responsibility. Haymitch doesn't take much convincing.

I am scared, at first, to venture into Peeta's home – strange, how often he had been to mine but how seldom I have been to his – and am even more scared to find that it is just as Haymitch said it would be. Every blind is closed. A smell of rotting food lies like the Quell's poisonous fog in the kitchen, so strong it makes my eyes water. Peeta lies, unmoving, in his cotton shell upstairs.

Because I am scared, I cannot bring myself to climb those stairs.

So I throw myself into _downstairs_. I cast open the blinds. I empty the creaking cupboards of their rotting stock and replace it with new, fresh food. I cook, I clean, I organise. I throw myself into a domestic goddess world that I had thought I was incapable of accessing.

When it is done, I stand at the bottom of the stairs.

And then I go home. I cry myself to sleep, because after all that has happened between us I always thought that now, when everything was over, I would at last be able to face the boy with the bread unashamedly and unafraid. In my misery I curse those stairs, hate them for separating me from him. But I know it's not the stairs that are to blame.

I am woken in the early hours of the morning by the smell of baking bread.

Peeta is sitting on the kitchen floor, staring through the glass door of the oven where lies the fresh mounds of golden dough into which he has poured all of his nightmares. As I tenderly move through the kitchen, unsure of the protocol for our meeting here in the home that I had carefully cleansed. He sees me in the reflection of the oven door and speaks. His voice is rough and cracks from lack of use.

"You came to take care of me. Real or not real?"

I nod. "Real."

"You didn't come up the stairs."

"Real."

"Because you were afraid of me."

I cannot answer this because my throat has closed up. I simply nod and squeeze my eyes shut to stop the tears from leaking out. I jump when I realise that Peeta has stood up and is winding his arms around me. He hesitates a little at my stiffness but when I relax into him we melt into one person, he holding me gently and I clutching at him as if afraid he might disappear again and spend another week upstairs, leaving me alone. "That's how I knew I had to get out of bed," he whispers, and my heart aches for the boy who climbed out of his incapacitating misery because _I had been afraid. _I know at this moment that he is coming back to me. I want to tell him that I've missed him. That I don't want him to go away again. That I will always be here to take care of him, no matter how afraid I am. But I cannot say this. So I say something else. Three little words I've been wanting to say ever since he took me in his arms.

"Peeta?"

"Katniss?"

"You really smell."


	8. Real

"You love me. Real or not real?"

When she hesitates, I'm almost certain she'll say no. Am I? No, she wouldn't refuse me like that. She simply won't answer. Katniss doesn't hurt you if she can help it. Not ever.

But then the smile slowly grows across her beautiful scarred face and my heart – had it stopped? I hadn't noticed – races. Warmth spreads through me and I close my eyes in preparation so that when she says the word, she won't see the moisture in them.

"Real."

I open my eyes to find that she's crying, too, but this doesn't matter as I lie her down to kiss her.


	9. Sleep

**Stimulus: **"You lack the season of all natures, sleep"

**POV: **Katniss

**Dedication: **My lovely English teacher, who got me to love Macbeth and gives me cake.

**AN: **Should anyone be confused by the overuse of Shakespeare in here, holler and I'll try to humbly sort things out for you. Sorry for this one, I was in a grim mood.

_You lack the season of all natures, sleep._

Odd, really, how the time when the world is finally at complete peace with itself is the time that mine comes crashing down on its fragile supports, tearing itself apart from the inside with claws and teeth sharpened to ravenous points.

Peeta thinks that it is the silence that does it. The silence in our minds leaves a space for the screaming to begin. And once it has begun, it is impossible to keep it inside.

Haymitch, beloved _Uncle _Haymitch, has a theory that within us all there resides a personal, snarling beast that sleeps in the day, twitches and growls in the night time. If we let it, it will tear us to pieces, and we will bleed tears through the sleepless nights.

I do not tell them, but I know that they are wrong. Both of them, wrong. Because it isn't the silent tranquillity of the night or the raging creature within that keeps me up at night. It's me.

It's all my fault.

The girl who was on fire: what was once a nickname to keep me alive has become the phrase that haunts me day and night in memories and dreams that burn me like wild fire. I, like a human torch, have lit everything that I have touched. Rue. District Twelve. The rebels. The children in Snow's garden. Prim, with her wings on fire.

I look at Peeta, grimacing and groaning from the unimaginable tortures that wait for him when he closes his eyes, and I know that even now, I burn him too.

_I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not._

_I am in blood stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er._

I have gone too far, now, to turn back the clock, the douse the fires with apologetic tears, to fly away to lands unknown where none can feel the feather-light touch of my death-wing.

Sleep no more: Katniss, not Macbeth, doth murder sleep.

I mention this to Peeta one day. I have not slept, now, for four nights. Peeta brings me bowls of broth that I do not eat. He strokes my hair and does not tell me that I am a fool, or tell me not to think about it. He tells me that although I have been a part of pain and death, I have given life and joy. Leads me to our children's bedroom, where sleep is still blissfully complete. These things do not feel like

One stirs. A bad dream, perhaps. "Daddy?" she groans. The threat of tears is on her voice and in my eyes once I have heard this: but why shouldn't she call Peeta? I do. I freeze, unsure of the etiquette of late night horrors – should I get Peeta? The thought shocks me because it accompanies the realisation that although these children have lived inside me, fed from me, taken life from me, they do not feel like mine. Surely these creatures, so peaceful and perfect in their design, cannot be mine? Where are their scars, their burns?

I know now that I cannot call Peeta. To do so would be a sign of defeat. Mustering what little life I can with so little nourishment to sustain me, I slip into her bed, pull her close. Brush her hair out of her eyes. Ignore her surprise that it's not daddy's firm arms but mummy's soft ones that weave around her. I'm here, I whisper. I'm here.

And for the first time in years, as I fall asleep with my daughter in my arms, I really am.


End file.
